I did suffer a bit of trauma today, said trauma being filing my income taxes. It looks like I have my withholding set up properly as I should be receiving just under $200 as a refund. (I don’t like over-withholding as it means the federal government gets to use my money interest-free. I’d rather have it in my accounts rather than the Feddle Gummint’s accounts.)
Now that I’ve got that out of my way I can focus on the incipient property taxes on The Gulch which will be due in June.
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In relation to yesterday’s post comes this by way of BattleSwarm Blog: DOGE Discovers Giant Social Security Fraud.
One small excerpt:
Musk told the audience with Gracias on stage that DOGE found “20 million dead people marked as alive… Social Security database, this is too crazy, and then you’ll notice there’s a strange trend here.”If each one of those 20 million people received $20,000 in benefits (Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid), that’s $400 billion - with a “b” - of taxpayer money being eaten up by fraud.
Read The Whole Thing.
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You know they’re in trouble when even Bill Maher says they’re too biased.
It seems that both NPR and PBS have gone too far when even members of the Left are saying so. In this case it’s comedian Bill Maher pointing the finger at both tax-funded broadcasters.
Maher recently blasted the two networks for their extreme bias. “We’ve outgrown the era where these outlets made sense,” Maher said on his HBO show, Real Time.I agree.
“In a country this polarized, where Republicans and Democrats see each other as existential threats, there’s no room for government-funded media that clearly favors one side.”
Maher also blasted NPR CEO Katherine Maher.
“I also read my namesake, Katherine Maher — head of NPR — and, you know, she said, ‘We’re completely unbiased.’ Give me a break, lady,” Maher added.
“I mean, they’re crazy far left. So, I mean, I think we’re past, my view, we’re past the age really, where the government, first of all, why do we need to subsidize — why can’t we have outlets like this and we’re so polarized,” he added. “These outlets became popular at a time when Republicans and Democrats didn’t hate each other and weren’t at each other’s throats and didn’t think each other was an existential threat in that world. You can’t have places like this I think anymore; they have to be private.”
Ironically, they don’t receive as much funding from the government as they have in the past, percentage-wise. They still are funded by the public through membership drives and grants. However, I have to agree with Bill Maher that maybe it’s time to stop using taxpayer money to fund media outlets that are openly hostile to the half of the population that disagrees with their political viewpoints.
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It is understood that elections have consequences and it looks like the taxpayers in Los Angeles are going to be feeling the effects of this past one, in this case one that affects their pocketbooks.
Consumers in Los Angeles County were shocked Tuesday as a new quarter-percent sales tax, ostensibly to raise funds for services for the homeless, went into effect following a referendum in November.How does the old saw go? “Subsidize something and you’ll get more of it. Tax something and you’ll get less of it.” In this case they’ve thrown money at dealing with homelessness...and ended up getting even more homelessness. Now they’re going to throw even more money at the problem and keep raising taxes to fund it all. It sounds like a vicious cycle to me.
L.A. voters passed Measure A, which replaced and increased an earlier county-wide sales tax for the homeless. That tax, passed a decade ago, failed to stem the growth of the homeless population and may even have encouraged it.
L.A. residents recently learned that $2.3 billion spent on homeless services in Los Angeles had been unaccounted for — and the money had come from the same sales taxes that referendums like Measure A had been designed to fund.
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This was the perfect imagery:
Getting Rid of DEI Is Like “Getting Soap Out Of A Sponge”
“Trump is now squeezing that sponge and a lot of the easy stuff is coming out now…. But DEI is going to persist for the foreseeable future… Do this for six to 10 years. and I think you will deal mortal damage to DEI. Do it for two to three years, and they will hang on, like survivors clinging to a lifeboat, just waiting for help to arrive.”HehTM
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When I read this I thought it might be a late April Fool’s prank...but it’s not.
It turns out that Democrats used to be all for tariffs until they were against them. What’s the difference between then and now?
I would have to say it’s those who are proposing them.
For five decades, politicians on both sides, but primarily Democrats and Independents, have called for America to take steps to equalize the “Free Trade,” which was not free or working for America. There is a video of Nancy Pelosi calling for tariffs against China in the 90s. Obama placed tariffs on Chinese auto tires during his term while Bernie Sanders urged Obama and Bush to even the playing field with tariffs against any country over-taxing us with double-digit tariffs or taxes. Even Joe Biden, or whoever was actually President, used tariffs.Where were these people when it was Democrats pushing for these kinds of tariffs? Oh, wait. It was the same people, but they’re against them now because it’s not them – Democrats - pushing for those same tariffs.
Now that Donald Trump is taking tariffs to a new level with a wide-scale policy against nearly every country charging us unreasonable tariffs, Democrats are now apoplectic about how Trump’s economic plan is going to cause widespread inflation and layoffs.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the rain has ended (for now), the sun is peaking out now and then, and where Monday is just around the corner...again.
UPDATE: UConn Women's Basketball team won the NCAA championship!